As most of you now know, I am the winner of the now famous, "You Don't Need No Steenkin' Bracelet" Underwood Portable typewriter, sold on ebay as #6236694710 in December of '05 (sorry, the link to this has now expired) by the very eloquent Mr. Jim Kranak of Weirton, W.Va.. The photo at left shows the machine sitting in its new home, my study. According to Mr. Kranak, he had owned the typewriter for 30 years. It arrived well packaged and as described by Mr. Kranak (although it was over-hyped just a tad as to cosmetic condition--it does have significant wear on the black paint around the front of the frame and on the paper table. The wear is visible in the photos). The machine has serial number 532554 which gives 1931 its year of manufacture. All functions on the machine work, but it had one problem endemic with machines of this age or older--it had absolutely no feet. Without feet the shift would not function properly, hitting the table when depressed and resulting in partial printing of capitals. However, the screws for the rear feet were still present. The front feet were apparently made to squeeze into their foundation and pop out the other side, being held in place by the rubber flange that popped through the large metal ring which was their foundation. No trace of the original front feet were present. However, procurring feet turned out to be quite easy.

     At Home Depot, I bought Surface Gard [sic] Screw Bumpers, 7/8", by Shepherd Hardware Products, #9131, for the outrageous price of $1.95. The package contains 4 white rubber bumpers with a pre-drilled hole through the center. They make perfect feet of just the right size. (See photo at right) The rubber bumpers are recessed on one side making it the perfect side to insert the screws through and to point down towards the table. I attached the bumpers to the front feet foundations by using #12-24 machine screws, 1/2" in length. I used a large washer under the nuts to keep the nuts from falling through the large holes in the feet foundations. The photos below give views of the front feet as seen through the keyboard.





     The screws that held on the rear feet are half threaded on the lower half of the shank. The upper half of the shank is larger in diameter than the lower half, being about a quarter inch in diameter. This necessitated that I enlarge the hole in the bumpers with a quarter inch screw hole tap. The screws can then be snugly fitted through the bumpers and the assembly screwed onto the frame of the typewriter in the correct position for the rear feet. If these screws are missing, I suspect you can substitute #6-40 one half inch machine screws. Here's a view of the underside of the machine with its new white feet installed.


     The picture on the left shows the right side of the machine with its pretty new white shoes and the photo on the right shows the left side of the machine with the same. Pretty, aren't they?? Over all, this is a very nice machine despite the wear on the frame. I've already typed a number of letters with it. It has elite type.

     I should mention one more thing. If you have the case for such a machine as this, the new feet used here will not allow the type writer to be secured to the bottom of the case. For me, that's a small price to pay for a usable typer of this vintage.




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